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Proverbs 14:22 · World English Bible

Proverbs 14:22 Meaning Don’t They Go Astray Who Plot Evil

Don’t they go astray who plot evil? But love and faithfulness belong to those who plan good.

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What does Proverbs 14:22 mean?

Every plan the mind lays is first a choice of teacher. To devise evil is to sit with fear and rehearse attack, and this is called wandering because the mind that expects harm has already lost its way and cannot find the door back to peace.

From the Christian Psychology reading below.

Proverbs 14:22 through 1 lens

The same verse, read by one tradition.

CHRISTIAN PSYCHOLOGY

Christian Psychology

Every plan the mind lays is first a choice of teacher. To devise evil is to sit with fear and rehearse attack, and this is called wandering because the mind that expects harm has already lost its way and cannot find the door back to peace. What it plans against another it has quietly believed about itself, and so it walks in a dream where every road curves back to guilt.

To devise good is simply to change teachers, to let love do the planning, and then mercy and truth are not rewards handed down from outside but the sight that returns the moment fear is set aside. A mind resolved to bless sees an innocent brother, and in seeing him gently it remembers it is safe. The making was never in the world. It was always in the one who looked, and he is free to look again.

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Christian Psychology lens

Live Proverbs 14:22 today

  1. When you find yourself drafting the argument you will have with someone, stop and write instead the one thing you actually want from them. Usually it is smaller and kinder than the draft.
  2. Before a hard conversation today, decide what good you want for the other person in it, and keep that in front of you while you talk.
  3. When a plan at work starts to become about making someone else look wrong, say the honest version of the problem instead and let the person off it.

What have I been quietly planning lately, and who was I planning it against?

The same truth in other traditions

Buddhism · Dhammapada 1

Everything begins with thought, and the life that follows is shaped by it as surely as a shadow follows a walker. What we plan in private becomes what we live in public.

Stoicism · Marcus Aurelius

The soul takes on the color of its thoughts, so be careful what you dye it with. Rehearsing harm stains the one rehearsing.

Tao Te Ching 27

The wise walk without leaving ruts, holding no one as an enemy to be managed. There is a way of moving through people that creates nothing to defend.

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